Former President Donald Trump used the unrest and fighting in Israel and Gaza to push for a ban on immigrants who “don’t like our religion,” by which he appears to have meant Christianity and Judaism, during a speech on Monday. He vowed to carry out such a ban if he is elected president again.
The vow follows Trump’s infamous travel ban, which was repeatedly stopped by left-leaning judges. Largely, those judges claimed in their rulings that the travel ban was discriminatory and meant to keep out Muslims, something the former President’s latest plan might run into as well.
In any case, during the Derry, New Hampshire rally on Monday, Trump argued that voting for Joe Biden is voting for the chaos afflicting the Middle East to take root in America, particularly the sort of anti-Western extremism found in the Gaza Strip.
He said, when making that point, “A vote for Crooked Joe is a vote to turn the United States into a hotbed of jihadists and make our cities into dumping grounds very much resembling the Gaza Strip. Have you been to the Gaza Strip?”
Continuing, Trump vowed that voting for him would mean that he would keep terrorists out of the country, saying, “A vote for President Trump is a vote to secure the border and it’s a vote to keep radical Islamic terrorists the hell out of our country.”
That’s when he got to how he would do so, saying that a new Trump Administration would “immediately restore and expand the Trump travel ban” and “halt all of the refugee settlements to the United States” on “day one” of his new presidency.
Continuing, Trump elaborated on why he thinks that those individuals need to be kept out of the country by a travel ban-like policy, saying, “They want to come in, they want to bring the same people that are shooting rockets at Israel, they want to come into the United States. I don’t think a lot of good things are going to happen. And I will implement strong ideological screening of all immigrants.”
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Then, sending a message to such people, one which got the crowd roaring with applause, Trump said, “If you hate America, if you want to abolish Israel, if you don’t like our religion — which a lot of them don’t — if you sympathize with jihadists, then we don’t want you in our country and you are not getting in.”
Watch Trump here:
Donald Trump: “A vote for President Trump is a vote to secure the border and it's a vote to keep radical, Islamic terrorists the Hell out of our country. On day one, I will immediately restore and expand the Trump Travel Ban.”
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) October 23, 2023
Tweeting about the impulse behind a travel ban in 2017, former President Trump said, “That’s right, we need a TRAVEL BAN for certain DANGEROUS countries, not some politically correct term that won’t help us protect our people!” In another post, he said, “People, the lawyers and the courts can call it whatever they want, but I am calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN!”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video